


Blood Runs At Midnight

by ufp13



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M, Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-02
Updated: 2008-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-29 04:51:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/316019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ufp13/pseuds/ufp13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a talk in the dark brings to light what had not been expected</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood Runs At Midnight

“I know how you feel,” she said as she met the other woman’s eyes in the window of the otherwise abandoned mess hall.

Breaking the eye contact after a short instant, B’Elanna shook her head tiredly, defeated, continuing to avoid Janeway’s eyes. The older woman kept studying her in the reflection, taking in her stance carefully before she made another tentative step toward her. The mood of her chief engineer worried her. She had seen her radiating anger, knew the results of her aggressiveness, even B’Elanna in a relaxed or sad mood wasn’t foreign to her. But at the moment, she appeared downright devastated and – did she dare say – vulnerable.

“How could you?!” B’Elanna suddenly spit out. “How could you possibly know how I feel?”

Bridging the remaining distance between them with slow strides, Janeway came to stand right next to, though slightly behind, the other woman.

“Because I, too, survived while people dear to me died. I actually saw them die. They died under my hands, and I couldn’t do anything about it.” Janeway’s voice was monotone, giving no emotions away.

“Who?” B’Elanna asked after a moment of silence.

“My fiancée and my father. A test flight, shuttle accident. We crashed into an ice mass; they both drowned with the main cabin in the icy water, while I was lucky to end up on the ice sheet with a different part of the shuttle.”

Now it was B’Elanna’s turn to seek out Janeway’s eye in the window, but she stared ahead, out into the dark, refusing to give away anything beyond the meaning of the words. B’Elanna would have lied had she said that the confession of her captain hadn’t surprised her. She remembered Chakotay mentioning that there was a lot more to this woman than one would guess, and this certainly was one of those things.

“What did you do? How… how did you manage to go on afterwards?” Astonishment and a faint trace of curiosity coloured her voice, encouraging Janeway to go on. She shrugged slightly.

“Truth to be told, I didn’t. I gave up. I shut the world out. I wanted to die.”

“But you obviously didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“What kept you?”

“My sister. She dragged me out, made me see life. And I’m still thankful for that, or I wouldn’t be here, seeing all this. It took time, but I realised that they would have wanted me to live, to live for them.” She paused, took a deep breath and met B’Elanna’s eyes in the reflection, her gaze like a firm grip that B’Elanna couldn’t escape. Then she continued, “What happened is not your fault, B’Elanna. It wasn’t your decision to be stranded out here – if it was anyone’s, it was mine. You didn’t choose to abandon them in cowardice. And, no matter what, you couldn’t have changed the outcome. This is bigger than you. Life is bigger than you. Life is bigger than all of us.”

“Still, I should have died with them.” The stubborn refusal to accept Kathryn’s words for what they were – the truth – sparkled vividly in her eyes. “There were lots of great men and women in the Maquis. Men and women who deserved to live more than I. People who weren’t such failures like I.” Her gaze stomped with the feet but to Janeway’s surprise, B’Elanna didn’t move a muscle. For a moment, she considered reaching out to her; however, she was afraid that this would be the spark that would set B’Elanna off, so she only turned slightly to look her directly into the face.

Her voice was like steel. “You are not a failure. Don’t you ever dare even think that. You mean a lot to people here. They value you for who you are. They love you for who you are.”

B’Elanna shook her head in denial at the words, her jaw clenched. “They just don’t know better.”

Janeway mirrored B’Elanna’s movement, though her shake of the head was soft, just like her voice as she answered. “That’s a lie, and you know that. You have lots of friends here: friends who need you – especially Tom. What about him? He’s worried about you.”

“I… he…” Words had left B’Elanna like they did so often when it came to the matters of heart.

“He loves you. He needs you. You changed him, B’Elanna: changed him for the better. He’s not the reckless pilot anymore he was when we started this journey, the man who cared about nothing but himself.”

“That’s not my doing,” B’Elanna snorted.

“Maybe not your doing alone, but you played a big role in that development of his. You can’t deny this.”

“What I can’t deny is that I don’t deserve to live when they had to die!”

Suppressing a sigh, Janeway closed her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. She knew that she had to be patient, knew that she had acted similar all those years ago, knew that time would never heal the wounds but that they would close and the scars would fade, provided that B’Elanna saw the light through the veil of darkness that covered her heart and clouded her mind.

“That’s not the truth, you know that. Your heart might not want to accept this just yet, but your head knows that I’m right.”

B’Elanna bit her bottom lip and lowered her head. Her voice was forced when she spoke again, and Janeway rather heard than saw the tears in her eyes. “What made you change your mind about dying? What made you really want to live?”

An airy laugh escaped Kathryn. “A combination of things. Nothing that was really palpable. My sister, as I said, for once. She dragged me out of bed, despite my protests. She took me nearly everywhere she went; my objections didn’t count. It annoyed the hell out of me as much as it annoyed her.” Janeway couldn’t help but smile at the memory of her sister telling her about the big hot fudge sundae she had granted herself in a park the day Kathryn had voluntarily left the house on her own for the first time after the accident. “But she did it anyway, and I’ll be always in her debt for that. And then I found a puppy in the snow. Isn’t it funny how it’s always the small things that really matter in the end? It would have died if I hadn’t taken it in. So there was suddenly someone who needed me. Taking care of it made me forget my own pain for a while.”

“But things weren’t different, were they?” B’Elanna saw behind the image Janeway had created.

Kathryn shrugged, unable to contradict this observation and not wanting to lie because that wouldn’t make it better, only worse in the end. “No, they weren’t; it took time, lots of time, but slowly, gradually, I began to understand that I couldn’t give myself up just because I had been so unfortunate – or rather fortunate – to survive where others had died. I began to see that I didn’t do them any favour by refusing to live, that it didn’t bring them back, and that it would most likely actually pain them to see me throwing the life I still had away. Do you think the men and women you knew would have wanted you to die? Do you think they begrudge you that you’ve still a life to enjoy?”

When the women’s eyes met this time, there was a shimmer of lust for life, of hope, shining through the veil of unshed tears in B’Elanna’s. “No,” she smiled albeit barely noticeably. “I don’t think they would.”

The quiet moment of acknowledgement between the women was interrupted by the opening of the mess hall doors and the entrance of Tom Paris who scanned the dark room until his eyes settled on B’Elanna. He stepped closer, not taking note of Janeway. “I’ve been waiting for you. We wanted to meet half an hour ago, but you didn’t show up so…” Worry was evident in his tone, however B’Elanna didn’t turn toward him, she kept looking into Janeway’s eyes, her smile widening, though.

“He really needs me, doesn’t he?” she whispered almost soundlessly.

Janeway’s lips curved into a soft smile of her own, and she nodded. “Yes, he does.” Then she broke the eye contact and shifted her attention to Tom who was startled when she spoke up, addressing him. “I’m sorry I kept her, Lieutenant. But she’s all yours now.”

When she turned back to the woman in question, her tone changed from businesslike to warm. “Don’t give up, just give it time. You have so much to live for.”

“Thank you – for everything.” Trust, faith, encouragement – her eyes specified the generality of her statement.

“You’re welcome.”

She watched B’Elanna walking over to Tom and enveloping him in an embrace that he all too gladly returned, burying his nose in her hair, murmuring words Janeway couldn’t understand. His hand on her back, they exited the mess hall, leaving Kathryn alone with her thoughts.

But the thoughts weren’t unhappy ones. There was something about Tom and B’Elanna that gave her hope, that made her think that being stranded in the delta quadrant wasn’t so bad after all, that there could have been a worse fate for all of them. They were still alive, had found friendship and even love.

Lost in memories and possibilities, she stared out of the window into space that was as dark as the room, never hearing the doors to the mess hall opening again. Therefore, she flinched slightly when a pair of warm, strong hands was laid on her shoulders, but she relaxed a blink of an eye later, recognising whom the hands belonged to.

“I missed you.” The owner of the hands whispered next to her ear. “The bed is empty and cold without you.”

She turned around, smiling up at Chakotay. “And here I thought you’d keep it warm for me,” she teased.

He leaned down, kissing her softly. “Always – you should know that. But it’s more fun with you in it to keep me company.”

Kathryn wrapped her arms around his neck and got onto her toes to kiss him back. “I tend to agree with this observation, Commander. So, shall we go to keep each other company?” She winked.

The grin on his face widened. Taking her by the hands, he led an amused Kathryn out of the mess hall back to her – their – quarters.

Yes, life was good.

= End =


End file.
